AI Pricing Assistant

The AI Pricing Assistant lets you build a product pricing formula by describing it in plain English. Instead of assembling pricing steps by hand, you type a sentence like "Charge material price per square foot, plus $25 if the finish is Premium" and the AI generates a complete, working pricing formula — already wired to that product's fields — along with a plain-language explanation and any warnings.

It produces the exact same step-based formula the Formula Builder uses, so anything the AI creates you can open, fine-tune, and save like any other formula. It's part of TimberCloud's native AI suite — included from the Commerce plan up, with no separate AI add-on or per-document charge.

Note: The AI Pricing Assistant runs on OpenAI's GPT models. Your prompt and your product's attribute fields are sent to generate the formula; your content is processed only for your company and is not used to train models.

What it does

You describe a pricing rule; the AI returns:

• A ready-to-use formula — a real step-based pricing formula with your product's attributes already referenced (e.g. material.price, design.stile_width), not pseudocode you have to translate.
• A plain-English explanation — a short summary of how the generated formula prices the product, so you can confirm it matches your intent.
• Warnings (when relevant) — flags such as a field the AI couldn't find or an assumption it made, so you know what to double-check before accepting.

Because the output is a standard formula, it supports everything the builder does: measurements (square feet, board feet, etc.), conditional surcharges, tiered pricing, and named variables.

Where to find it

1. Open a product and go to the Pricing tab.
2. On the Step-Based Formula card, click the AI Assistant button (the sparkles button, next to Create Formula / Edit Formula).
3. The AI Formula Assistant window opens with a text box for your description.

Tip: The button says Create Formula when the product has no formula yet and Edit Formula once one exists — but the AI Assistant button is available either way, for both building from scratch and changing an existing formula.

Create mode vs. edit mode

The assistant adapts to whether the product already has a formula:

• Create mode — the product has no pricing formula yet. Describe the whole pricing rule and the AI builds it from nothing. The button inside the dialog reads Generate.
• Edit mode — the product already has a formula. The dialog shows your Current Formula at the top and a "Editing existing formula" label, and you describe the change you want (e.g. "add a 10% rush surcharge"). The AI revises the existing formula rather than starting over. The button reads Update Formula.

In both modes you can keep refining the result conversationally — see Revising your formula below.

Example prompts

You don't need any special syntax — write the way you'd explain pricing to a coworker. A few that work well:

Per-square-foot pricing with a conditional surcharge

Charge material price per square foot, plus $25 if the finish is Premium

Tiered quantity pricing

$40 per unit for the first 10 units, $35 per unit for 11 to 50, and
$30 per unit above 50

Field × measurement

Multiply the material price by the board feet, then add a 12% waste factor

Edit mode — add a surcharge

Add a 10% rush surcharge

Edit mode — change a value

Change the rate to $60 per square foot

The more specific your prompt — which attribute drives the price, the exact rates, and any conditions — the closer the first result will be.

The result panel

After you click Generate (or Update Formula), the assistant shows a Generated Formula section with three parts:

If something looks off, you don't have to accept it — revise it or hand it to the manual builder.

Accept, Edit Manually, or Revise

Three actions are available once a formula has been generated:

• Accept — applies the generated formula to the product. This is the formula that will be used to price the product (and the storefront/order screens). You can still open it in the Formula Builder later to adjust it.
• Edit Manually — drops the generated formula straight into the Advanced Formula Builder, where you can tweak individual steps, add measurements or variables, or change conditionals by hand. Use this when the AI gets you 90% of the way and you want precise control over the rest.
• Revise… — clears the input so you can describe a further change. The assistant remembers the conversation, so each revision builds on the last result instead of starting fresh. Keep going until the preview is exactly right, then Accept.

Tip: Revising is the fastest way to iterate. Generate a first draft, then nudge it: "make the waste factor 15% instead of 12%" or "only apply the surcharge to oak." Each turn refines the same formula.

Relationship to the Formula Builder

The AI Pricing Assistant and the Formula Builder are two ways into the same pricing engine — they produce identical step-based formulas, and you can move between them freely:

• Generate with AI, then Edit Manually to fine-tune steps in the Advanced builder.
• Build a formula by hand in Simple or Advanced mode, then open the AI Assistant later to make a quick change in plain English.

The Formula Builder itself has two modes — Simple (pick a strategy: Flat Price, Price by Size, From Product Field, or Field × Measurement) and Advanced (step-by-step with measurements, groups, named variables, and multi-branch IF / ELSE IF / ELSE logic). TimberCloud auto-opens whichever mode fits the current formula. For the full reference on measurements, field references, variables, and conditionals, see Product Pricing and the Formula Builder guide.

Note: There is no JavaScript code editor in the pricing screen. The step-based Formula Builder and the AI Assistant are the two ways to author pricing. (Legacy code/flow pricing on older products still evaluates on the backend, but it's not an authoring option — and saving a new step formula or AI-generated formula supersedes it.)

Notes and limits

• Plan & permission. AI features are included from the Commerce plan up; the AI Assistant button appears when your company has AI features and your role allows editing products. See Subscriptions & Plans. The 14-day trial is full-feature, so the assistant is available during the trial.
• Always review before accepting. The AI generates a formula based on your description and the product's attributes — read the explanation, check the warnings, and confirm the preview prices the way you expect.
• Nothing changes until you Accept. Generating a formula only proposes it; the product's live pricing isn't affected until you click Accept (or save after Edit Manually).
• Teach the AI your terminology. A company-wide Global AI Instructions prompt (Settings → Catalog → AI Settings) can steer AI features with your brand voice, terms, and defaults.

Related

• Product Pricing — the full pricing model and how formulas drive storefront/order prices.
• Formula Builder — the step-based builder (Simple & Advanced modes), measurements, variables, and conditionals.
• AI Overview — every AI feature in TimberCloud and which plan unlocks each.